Course Documents
Spring 2012 Syllabus
Criteria according to which papers will be marked
Purdue's Online Writing Lab offers a guide to MLA Style for citations. You can also find a helpful 'Grammar A-Z' from Oxford Dictionaries.
Guidelines for Project 1
Guidelines for Project 2
Guidelines for Project 3
Guidelines for Project 4
Guidelines for portfolios and revision
Some poetry performance links:
Billy Collins reading 'Litany'
Greek drama for veterans
NPR story on the first Warrior Resilience Conference and what was then known as the Philoctetes Project, where actors perform Greek drama in order to help veterans and their loved ones adjust to life after combat (25 Nov. 2008)
The Philoctetes Project is now known as Theater of War, part of a larger umbrella organization that uses drama to open up discussion on complex, divisive social questions, including addiction, end of life concerns, and prison life.
Reading Death of a Salesman after a recession
The website for the 2012 Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman includes this "News" page, which features a number of links to articles that argue for the topical relevance of the play in a society that is still struggling to emerge from a major economic downturn. The New York Times review of the production picks up on this theme, and this essay (again, from the NYT) particularly develops the argument. This USA Today piece also calls the revival "hauntingly applicable" to 2012.
By contrast, listen to (or read) how the director, Mike Nichols, also finds a different way of understanding the central conflict that Willy Loman faces. Similarly, Philip Seymour Hoffman supplements the obvious economic parallels with some thoughts on the family dynamics and audience reactions.